P. Parrish - Heart of Ice

She nodded as she fished a hairbrush from her travel bag.

“You feel like going downstairs to get a glass of wine?”

She came over to him and ran a hand over his neck. “I don’t think so,” she said. His hand came up to grasp hers, and he kissed her fingers. Then he let go and went back to his postcard.

Her eyes drifted down to his back, to the small scars just below his shoulder blades. She had seen them before, of course, the first time they had made love. But she had been hesitant to ask him about them because she knew he had been a foster child and she had a feeling the scars were something he wanted to forget. Finally, when she did ask, he told her he had fallen off a bike. She had let it go. There were doors she knew he would never open, not even for her.

Dancer’s notebook was sitting on the desk by Louis’s elbow. She picked it up and went to the window seat. She sat down and opened the notebook to the crayon drawing Dancer had made of Louis.

She realized now that Dancer had captured Louis in those first moments as he was kneeling over Flowers after the shooting. It was all there on Louis’s face-anger, anxiety, and the fierce need to right the wrong. There was something else there, too. It was in the eyes, a soft swirl of pain. But whose pain?

She turned the page. Dancer’s drawing of her. Her eyes wide and liquid, her mouth agape as if caught in midquestion.

She shut her eyes. But it didn’t help because the images were all there in her memory. Fifteen years and it was still there, every detail of the ambush that had killed two of her fellow officers and left her for dead in the snow.

And Rafsky. .

She opened her eyes and turned to the next page in the notebook.

The man in the sketch had Rafsky’s features-the long straight nose, concave cheeks, thin lips, and pale eyes. But there was something disturbingly empty about the likeness, as if there were nothing behind the skin, nothing alive in the eyes. Dancer hadn’t drawn a man. He had drawn a ghost.

Joe shut the notebook and drew up her knees. She looked over to the desk, but Louis was gone. She heard the groan of the plumbing and then the rush of the shower in the bathroom.

She drew back the curtain and looked down. The rain had stopped, and the street was dark and quiet. She saw someone step out of the shadows and then a flick of a lighter as it caught the tip of a cigarette. A face was revealed just long enough for her to see it was Rafsky.

He turned in a slow half circle, as if trying to figure out where he wanted to go. But then he just stood there in the middle of the street.

He was Section-Eighted to Siberia.

That’s what her friend at the state police had told her when she made a discreet inquiry about what Rafsky had been doing for the last fifteen years. She had felt guilty about checking up on Rafsky after Louis told her he was on the island, but she gave in to her curiosity.

Section Eight was the official name of the district of the Upper Peninsula covered by the state police. But it was also military-discharge jargon for mental cases. Norm Rafsky, once one of the state’s most respected investigators, had been exiled to a remote post in the U.P. Her friend at the state police didn’t know all the details, just what he had heard. That after the ambush at Echo Bay fifteen years ago, Rafsky’s injury had sidelined him to a desk job for two years. And when he returned to active duty he was never the same. Something had been lost, iced over.

Joe looked toward the bathroom. She knew Louis would stay in the shower until the water went cold. She went to the desk, scribbled a note that she was taking a walk, grabbed her leather jacket, and left the room.

Rafsky was still standing in the street when she emerged from the hotel. His back was to her, but he heard her and turned. In the light spilling out from the hotel windows, she saw his face tighten.

As she came closer he looked up at the night sky, as if trying to avoid meeting her eyes.

“It’s a blue moon tonight,” he said.

The cloud cover was so dense there was no moonlight at all. The air was so cold it almost smelled of snow.

“Do you know what a blue moon is?” he asked. When she didn’t answer he went on. “Two full moons in one month, a rarity. Once in a blue moon.”

He finally looked at her. “I’ve done everything I could not to run into you in the last fifteen years, and now you show up here.”

“I didn’t plan on it,” she said.

Rafsky took a final drag on the cigarette, tossed it to the street, and crushed it out with his heel. “How do you know Kincaid?” he asked.

“We met two years ago when I was with Miami homicide. I helped him with a case.”

“Two years,” Rafsky said. “That’s a relationship.”

Joe didn’t say anything. The silence lengthened.

“How have you been, Norm?” she asked.

Maybe it was because she used his first name when they had always called each other by their surnames. Rafsky-Frye, it had always been Rafsky-Frye. Maybe he took it as a signal that their old relationship of mentor-rookie was long gone. Maybe he thought she was patronizing him. Whatever the reason, he took a half-step away from her.

“I’m okay,” he said. “You know how it goes.”

She touched his sleeve. “How’s your arm?”

He flexed his forearm beneath the trench coat. Then, suddenly, she felt him relax.

“It’s not worth a damn anymore, Joe,” he said.

Her hand moved up to his shoulder, and she gave him a squeeze. He met her eyes for a moment, then looked away.

“I had to learn how to shoot all over again lefty,” he said.

“You don’t need a gun to do your job,” she said.

He gave her a withering look.

“Okay, forget that,” she said. She struggled to find something neutral to talk about.

“How’s Gina?” she asked.

“We split up twelve years ago.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” He reached into his coat and pulled out his cigarettes again. He lit one and drew deep on it.

“When did you start smoking?” she asked.

“Twelve years ago.”

“How’s your son, Robert?” Joe asked.

“Ryan,” Rafsky said.

“Sorry. He must be, what, in his twenties now?”

“Twenty-five. Married. Associate professor of biology at Northern. He’s got a daughter, five years old.”

Joe stayed quiet, waiting for Rafsky to go on. He took a step away, then looked back at her.

“I need to walk. You want to come?” he asked.

She nodded, and they started down the street. They turned onto Main Street, where the old globed lamps left pearly puddles on the wet street.

“Your son and granddaughter,” Joe began, “do you get to see them much?”

It was a long time before Rafsky answered. “After Gina left we lost touch.” He paused. “It was my fault. I let them both go without a fight.”

He took another drag on the cigarette, and it was a few more steps before he spoke again. “When Ryan got the job at Northern last year I called him. I wanted to reconnect.”

Joe had a sudden memory from the case fifteen years ago. Over dinner, Rafsky had given her advice on not letting the job take over her life. She could still remember his exact words.

You have to be careful. You have to have another life. A lot of cops let their work become their life. And my God, that will kill you.

She remembered that after enough wine he had pulled out his wallet and proudly showed her a picture of Ryan. She could remember, too, how the boy had looked-a small replica of his father, right down to the spiky sandy hair.

“So are things going well with Ryan now?” she asked.

Again he was slow to answer. “He’s having a hard time forgiving me for not being there. And he’s having a hard time believing me when I tell him I want to be there now for Chloe.”